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Direct Link To This Post Topic: Sovereignty Improvements
    Posted: 23 Apr 2011 at 20:10
Ok first off: I LIKE sovereignty. I think the way the dev team has designed it is in general, brilliant. It really does add a massive new level of complexity and branching out of possible strategies for advanced players' cities and accounts.

But I was chatting about the merits of various sov strats in alliance chat today and came across a number of small issues that could be improved to make sov a far more inviting, user friendly and enjoyable game element for all.

So I've decided to make this thread for 2 purposes:
 - Firstly: The collection and discussion of various fixes/improvements to sovereignty as it exists today.
 - Secondly: I would like to see endorsement by as many older Illy players as possible for ideas they like so we can get these changes made.

THIS THREAD IS NOT FOR TOTALLY *NEW* CONCEPTS RELATED TO SOVEREIGNTY.
(first person to mention 'outposts' will recieve unfriendly visitors ingame Evil Smile)
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Apr 2011 at 20:22
Fixes/Improvements:
 - Structure Build/Demolish Times - At the moment before you build a structure it tells you the build time. But there is no 'completion time' once you have started building, and there is no listed 'demolish time' or 'demolish completion time' displayed anywhere. IMO it would be nice to have these displayed in a similar way to buildings within a city. I believe there was a counter like this on the old interface but not in the new.

 - Downgrading Sov Claims - So at the moment when you downgrade a sov claim it keeps on downgrading, all the way until the claim expires totally unless you make the effort to log on when the claim is at the right level, move an army to the square and reaffirm the claim. It would be exceedingly useful to be able to just select a target level to downgrade the claim when you first downgrade.

 - Target levels for Claims / Structures - Would it be worth having target levels for sov claiming aswell to make the whole process easier/more accessible/fun (still dependent on having an army present at the start of each claim level) or is this too much automation/too easy? Likewise, should building/demolishing structures have automatic target levels or should they remain the same as in-city buildings? - HMs idea

 - Sov Structure Bonuses During Delevelling - At the moment a player gets no kind of bonus from a sov structure during delevelling (but DOES during sov claim increasing)... so should a player instead receive the structure bonus at the lower level? And should there be a distinction made between self-initiated delevelling and hostile counter-claims (like structure bonus or no structure bonus, target level set by player and target level of 0). - HMs idea

 - Relative Coordinates for a City's Claims in Overview - At the moment it's not clear which claim corresponds to which tile without the laborious process of memorising 6 figure coordinates then zooming in on the world map and working out which sov claim they belong to. A new local coordinate system just for the sov overview screen would solve this (with the city at 0|0 in the new frame obviously). - HMs idea

Bugs/Glitches:
 - Low Level Claim/High Level Structure - There is glitch where it is possible to claim high sovereignty on a square, then build a sov structure up to the same level, then you can downgrade your sov claim but STOP it before it reaches level 0. Then you end up with a high level sov structure on a low sov square, hence you save yourself alot of gold/research. IMO this is an abuse of the way sov was originally intended to be used and it should be patched. - Fixed

 - Production Structures have a 'food upkeep' cost - displayed in a table with other upkeep costs when you complete a structure. - Not Fixed

 - Sov Bonus % is displayed incorrectly - I think it is only in the military/diplo production screens that is displays the incorrecy %age. (Advanced resource bonuses all display correctly) Fixed

 - Unclaiming times for sov squares are incorrect - I've only tested this for reducing level 4 to level 3 sov so far - in this case it displays a reduction time of 4 days and when you start the reduction it counts down from 5 days. (if this is also true for other levels I would suggest that the "claim decrease" time has been accidentally made the same as the "claim increase" time for the next level. - Not Fixed

Keep the ideas coming and I'll add them to this list if they're sensible!

edit: updated to cross off a couple of fixed bugs.


Edited by Createure - 23 Apr 2012 at 15:44
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Tordenkaffen View Drop Down
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Apr 2011 at 20:29
Nevermind 

Edited by Tordenkaffen - 23 Apr 2011 at 21:21
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Apr 2011 at 20:58
Originally posted by Tordenkaffen Tordenkaffen wrote:

Suggestion:
Reduced food cost for all sovereignty squares and buildings - make sovereignty more accesible.

There is currently no food cost for establishing/building or maintaining sovereignty squares or structures.

If anyone here wishes to contribute and is unsure as to what the current precise details are regaring how exactly sov works, please take the time to read through this announcement (it will teach you alot): http://forum.illyriad.co.uk/coming-soon-sovereignty-brace-for-impact_topic765.html

I DO agree with you that ingame when you complete a "production structure" (every structure except "resource structures") it lists the building as having a food upkeep. I will add this error to the list. If you want to see a breakdown of you food income/outlay go to the bottom of this page: http://uk1.illyriad.co.uk/#/Town/Resources
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 Apr 2011 at 04:55
Although in general I very much agree with SC's policy that game mechanics should not be automated in nature, I strongly feel that sovereignty should automatically progress toward a "target level" when leveling up and especially down.

The sovereignty overview page isn't nearly so convenient or accessible as the town map, and there are no summary areas tracking progress on sovereignty claims or structures.  They could be added, but that would ultimately only provide more clutter to the interface, bringing demerit to the system as a whole.

But setting sovereignty claims to automatically check against "target level" whenever some milestone is completed (previous claim/de-claim action or structure level change) provides the event queue with the necessary triggers for an easy-to-develop as well as convenient and functional improvement to sovereignty management.  Upon reaching those events, the event processor can compare current level against target to decide whether to raise, lower, or stay, as well as fix the current exploit with structure levels by automatically de-leveling the structure if required by the new (or next) level.

That's a heck of a lot better than the system as it is designed now, which is even far worse than Createure describes: One must level a claim down 2 levels just to have the option to bring it back up one, all for the sake of getting it down one.  Bringing some of my lvl 5 sovereign claims down to for was utter agony.  And to add injury to insult, during the de-leveling process the sovereign structure may not level down but also has no effect at all.  It would be far more equitable if the queue processor instead used the "target level changed by user with occupying forces" event to trigger de-leveling of both the structure (if necessary) and the claim, thus fixing the exploit but also allowing continued enjoyment of the structure at the new lower target level.

Leveling the structure itself up or down for any reason other than having a structure level above the current or upcoming claim level would still be manual as now, or it could work in the "target building at x level" strain as well.  It would be even cheaper in this case, as there isn't the need for occupying forces, meaning the event can be reliably triggered by the change as opposed to either the change or the arrival of forces necessary to enact the change.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 24 Apr 2011 at 11:45
Originally posted by HonoredMule HonoredMule wrote:

Although in general I very much agree with SC's policy that game mechanics should not be automated in nature, I strongly feel that sovereignty should automatically progress toward a "target level" when leveling up and especially down.

I'm undecided on this one. I agree about target levels when levelling down (especially over the current system where the current target delevel is ALWAYS level 0), but I wonder if target levels when going up makes it just a bit too... easy.


Originally posted by HonoredMule HonoredMule wrote:

That's a heck of a lot better than the system as it is designed now, which is even far worse than Createure describes: One must level a claim down 2 levels just to have the option to bring it back up one, all for the sake of getting it down one.
I forgot about this part. Yes it is quite frustrating having to go into this kind of micro-management.

Originally posted by HonoredMule HonoredMule wrote:

during the de-leveling process the sovereign structure may not level down but also has no effect at all.  It would be far more equitable if the queue processor instead used the "target level changed by user with occupying forces" event to trigger de-leveling of both the structure (if necessary) and the claim, thus fixing the exploit but also allowing continued enjoyment of the structure at the new lower target level.
Yeh I also forgot about the "no effect of structure during 'delevelling'". I think this effect is a result of the idea that an army that disputes a sov claim triggers the delevelling and hence it makes sense that you would get no benefit from the sov square during hostile take-overs. I still think that during self-initiated delevelling you should recieve the structure bonus at the current level of the claim (or structure once the 'structures don't automatically delevel' glitch is fixed). I wonder if there needs to be a distinction made between 'hostile intiated dispute/delevelling' and 'self-initiated delevelling' because at the moment I think there is maybe the same game mechanic for delevelling in both circumstances.

Alternatively you could have hostile take-overs utilise the same mechanic as there currently is:
 - So a hostile player arrives on a sov square and initiates delevelling (the delevelling initiated is a delevel with target level 0) and in order to cancel the delevelling a player needs to remove (or wait 'til it has moved) the hostile army, place an army on the disputed square and reintiate the claim.
 - Then self initiated delevelling uses the SAME game mechanic as a hostile take over except there is no army required to start delevelling and the target level is set by the player. In order to stop delevelling the player needs to send an army to reinitiate the claim, otherwise the claim will drop to the target level and stabilise.

Originally posted by HonoredMule HonoredMule wrote:

Leveling the structure itself up or down for any reason other than having a structure level above the current or upcoming claim level would still be manual as now, or it could work in the "target building at x level" strain as well.  It would be even cheaper in this case, as there isn't the need for occupying forces, meaning the event can be reliably triggered by the change as opposed to either the change or the arrival of forces necessary to enact the change.
Personally I see no need to have 'target levels for sov structures'... I think sov structures should fairly evenly match city buildings in how they are levelled up/down, but I'll add the idea to the list above for discussion.


Edited by Createure - 24 Apr 2011 at 11:58
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 Apr 2011 at 08:47

To make the deleveling more simple and avoid to have a low lvl sov tile with a high lvl sov structure, it could be based on the sov structure lvl.

means that if you have a lvl 5 Jousting Yard on  a lvl 5 sov Tile, First of all you will need to demolish your Jousting yard lvl 5, for it to come back to lvl 4. You can unclaim sovereignty only if the lvl of your sov tile is higher than the lvl of the sov building on it.

i would say that would be better if you could unclaim your sovereignty in the same time that the sov structure is unbuilding.
Then, if we can select the lvl of the building after it's demolition, and if we can select the lvl at which the sov tile must end after the unclaim, that would take the same time to unclaim with this system than with the actual system.
Also, it would take the same time if someone is trying to ask sov on your tiles: first, the occupying force destroys the sov building by 1 lvl, then the sovereighty is unclaimed by 1 lvl. when this is done, sov building is destryed by 1 lvl again, etc... as far as it reaches 0.


But if we dont care about keeping the same time for unclaiming sov, then, no need of being able to chose the final lvl of the tile/building after a(n) unclaim/demolition. Then that's not automatic and you must manually demolish and unclaim sov building then sov tile for each lvl.


Or to do it more simple, we could imagine that when you want to unclaim a sovereignty, the building is automatically destroyed if it has the same lvl that the sov tile when the unclaim begins for each lvl.



Edited by Mandarins31 - 26 Apr 2011 at 08:50
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 26 Apr 2011 at 14:33
@Createure:  There are still use-cases for having sovereign structures at a lower level than the claim itself.  For example, an adjacent tile may have some sovereign structure for a non-natural resource, which is too costly at level 5.  But being adjacent, the sovereignty cost for a lvl 5 claim is still well worth maximizing the defensive penalty against incursions.

Also, the point was never automation, but rather dealing with insane micromanagement of system areas that aren't even easy to watch let alone maintain progress.

Another point:  I often wish that listed sovereign claim positions included relative coordinates.  That's the meaningful (distinctive) information we pick up at a glance when using the world map.
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 May 2011 at 17:01
bump - another bug or 2 have been added to the list. Ermm
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Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11 May 2011 at 17:13
Very useful post - noted internally, with action points forthcoming.

tyvm all - don't hesitate to keep the ideas/fixes flowing.

SC
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